Boris Yeltsin's visit to a suburban Houston supermarket in 1989 (2016)

I've lived in the US my entire life, so I don't really know much else - but I am and always have been blown away by fresh fruit in January (the whole year!). Sometimes I turn over a fresh apple or pear in my hands and the sticker has "product of Chile" or some other South American country - blows me away every time I stop and think about it....

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

Most of these countries I have never been in but let's consider Taiwan. I've been there in the 70s. I've had many visits to China since the late 90s. They should have started out pretty much even since 1948. Admittedly, my memories are old but I would say 70s Taiwan was similar to 90s China--something held China back far more than Taiwan was held back.

I have also had a dramatic illustration of the endemic food problems in communist-era China. When I was first in China I could see over the crowds--eye height for me was above the top-of-hair height for virtually all the locals. This was just before the first people born in the capitalist era were coming of age. As they came of age my view got more and more obstructed--these days I'm taller than the average Chinese person but the difference is nowhere near as extreme. That's not genetics, that's nutrition. In other words, virtually everybody was stunted by inadequate nutrition during the communist era. (I can't make the height comparison for Taiwan, I was not an adult at the time.)

Or look at the economic situation in China back then. A discussion that played out again and again. Young female in China, generally a shopkeeper, talking to my wife (China-born, native speaker): "does he [referring to me] understand us?" Her: "no" (I can pick out an occasional word) Woman: "How do you like being married to an American?" Her: "I'm happy" Woman: "How do I get one?", often followed by providing pictures and contact information in the hopes she could play matchmaker. It's been many years since this has happened, though--there isn't the huge economic gap there used to be.

Or lets look at the other second-world countries. I've been in a good portion of them in the 70s. The economic gap was huge, there was also a big gap in how oppressive the government was. I see a lot of people throwing around the term "police state"--almost never with any idea of what that really means. Romania, 1975, we had a run-in with the police. Entirely their goof, their official wrote down the wrong thing and it was pretty easy to show it was their problem. Then came the hard part--they needed some paperwork filled out about the situation. Big problem--we needed translation, nobody was willing to be involved in a police matter even though their name would not appear. Finally a businessman from Austria overheard and offered to help as he knew we wouldn't find a local who was willing. Contrast this with China, IIRC early 2000s: My wife was looking for DVDs of Chinese TV dramas and there were few to be found--DVD sellers almost always only had movies. My wife was a bit naive about how much China had changed resulting in a miscommunication--it didn't occur to her that the "other" stuff he had nearby was porn, not what she was after. (Note: Illegal--almost certainly R18 stuff smuggled in from Hong Kong. There's no way that would have happened in the China she grew up in.) I realize the issue, we walk off but she doesn't make it clear why. The seller keeps pursuing us through the market (someone with an American partner was at the time seen as a lucrative prospect) until a cop shoos him off--and he talks back to the cop. (We did not stick around for the whole exchange, but he was complaining he had done nothing wrong.) That would *never* happen in a police state.

Or lets look at one of those dictatorships that you didn't list: Iran. Once again, 1975. While it was backwards it was a breath of fresh air compared to Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Note: This was before the time of Islamist issues. I wouldn't go back to any of those countries these days!)

There's also the issue that people from tropical countries are used to a variety of fruit we simply don't have. There are various things that are either rare in the US or completely absent because they can't survive being shipped. Even subtropical--my wife loves dragon fruit but is unwilling to pay through the nose for the very inferior stuff in the market here.

While I do not have a taste for tropical fruit there are the bananas we encountered in Africa that ruined me. Since encountering those I have pretty much zero interest in US bananas, what we had there can't be bought in the US because they don't ship well.

>If the threat model is to protect against an overt military invasion by the US, geographical features aren't going to matter much either.

The US made the mistake of thinking that geographical features didn't pose them a problem in Afghanistan.

Then they realized how incredibly frail their supply chains could be when geography wasnt in their favor.

That mistake cost trillions.

>But regardless, the countries the US has invaded still have intact borders!

This is the most absurd excuse for American imperialism I think I've ever heard.

>Then he throws out the justification that other countries might engage in the same, even though nobody has.

So, Libya happened. America wants Russia to end up like Libya. Russia doesnt want to end up like Libya, so they invaded Ukraine.

>That is what is grossly unacceptable, and needs to be stamped down hard if we want our era of relative peace to continue.

I mean, if you excuse the wanton destruction of Libya by saying "hey at its a failed state but it has intact borders!" then you were basically begging for Ukraine to be invaded.